INTO WHERE THE LIFE IS
15/08/24 14:24
People may not pursue life with a passion because they do not suspect they are dead. Some pursue life for its own sake. But by wrong means. Not a few sense that the things they have grasped have not made them alive. It make take longer to realise that religion does not make us alive. When they do such people develop an addiction to Jesus.
FOUND CHRIST HIS LIFE
A friend of mine, while a young man, would return from outings like bush walks and parties only to find himself angry. It was this disappointment with life as un-life that pointed him to Jesus, where he found His life, peace and satisfaction. He also found his life calling as a minister of Christ’s life.
FALSE LIFE
Real life is found in direct union with Christ. Because Religion insulates us from Christ, we may not know that we are dead. But this is what Jesus said when He Spoke in Revelation of being ‘neither hot nor cold’. This has nothing to do with ‘zeal’ and everything to do with living the mis-direction of living Christianity as externalities and rules instead of Christ our life. Christ our life is our being graced/incarnated with Christ.
WHAT GOD?
We can be active in works of charity yet remain dead in our spirit. Some of the most busy Christian are simply not alive. We can make a ‘saviour’ of religion and not know that we are not alive in our spirit. Religion is a most subtle false God because it promotes itself as godliness. Jesus stated that the flesh accomplishes nothing for the Kingdom of God, which is a Kingdom of spirit and life. Making a god of religion deadens our spirit. It’s a most subtle form of idolatry. So does a distorted christ of the kind that is the Supervisor of the Law. We can attach ourselves to a legalised christ and not know that this is a false christ and that our spirit is dead.
PAUL TALKS SENSE
Paul spoke of Christ our life for a reason. Because we are alive in our spirit, soul and body when Jesus is our life. The incarnation means Jesus is us. The true Gospel is not that Jesus mediates to us the law and religion. Jesus mediates Himself to us in such exquisite interwoveness that His Spirit manifests as us.
Many folks, do not know they are not alive. As legalists, we are ‘the deadest’, many of us are dead people walking. Sure, we may live moral lives and may even function in some gifts. But we are not persons of spirit and life. We don’t have to be dead before we are dead.
THE FACT OF HIS BEING
But note this. Christ in us is a fact. The importance of this is much more than dealing with sin. The cool thing about ‘Christ our life’ is that because He becomes us by the Spirit, we come alive in our spirit. ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV. When we realise we are one with Jesus and all that He is, we start to grow into the truth of who we are as a person woven into the fullness of God.
